STITCHES IN TIME by Barbara Michaels is a great little spooky novel :

From Publishers Weekly
The latest romantic suspense novel from Michaels (Shattered Silk) is a bizarre story involving a haunted quilt that exerts an evil influence over characters' lives. It stars Cheryl Cardoza and her sister-in-law, Kara, seen previously in Ammie, Come Home and Shattered Silk. Owners of a vintage clothing store in Leesburg, Va., they hire an assistant, Rachel Foley, a graduate student in anthropology at a nearby university, where she is doing a research project on how quilt-making and other women's crafts assume a magical significance in such important cultural rituals as marriage. When Rachel touches a mysterious antique quilt made by a secretly jealous woman for the wedding of a friend who was marrying her ex-lover, she herself becomes the victim of such magic. Under the spell of this quilt, Rachel falls in love with Cheryl's husband and attempts murder. With the help of anthropology professor Adam, a friend of Kara's, the quilt is "mutilated" and its evil forces exorcised.

Whitney Otto wrote a lovely novel called How to Make An American Quilt, about a young woman who is helping out her grandmother and great aunt, and end up being part of their quilting bee. Similar to Green Fried Tomatoes, very much a book about how quilting is history, storytelling, and community all rolled up in one. It came out in 1991 and I'd be surprised if she hadn't read it yet, but you might like it.

Bunn - The Quilt
Ott - How to make an American Quilt

These two are rather common books, much like Chiaverrini's books, that most quilters and quilt book readers are probably familiar with.

Barbara Brackman writes non-fiction, especially books about quilts from the Civil War era, and the western movement that are full of great American history.

Don't ignore children's books about quilting...the illustrations are often quite beautiful, and they often contain history of the patterns, and instructions for making them (The Promise Quilt by Ransom:
Addie's father promises her that when she is older, he'll send her to school. Then he goes off to war, serving as a guide to General Lee, and never returns. Addie, her mother, and her brother struggle to survive in the war-ravaged South, with only Papa's red flannel shirt to comfort them. When the time comes for Addie to go to school, she is dismayed to learn that the school has no supplies. Mama decides to make a quilt to raffle off and Addie gives up her father's shirt when her mother needs more fabric to complete it. The proceeds from the raffle are used to buy books and other materials, and Addie believes that Papa, in his own way, has kept his promise. This realistic tale, told from the point of view of a Southerner, is very touching. Like the pieces of the quilt, historical details are seamlessly interwoven in the story, bringing to life a very troubled time.

I have several of these and I love them and my grandchildren read them when they visit, and buy them for me.

Well, there's Peter Quilt in The Turn of the Screw....

...or Under Quilt Wood by Dylan Thomas...

...and of course, Don Quixote who was always quilting at windmills...

(Sorry - couldn't resist...!)

This subject is "dear to my heart." The first full length novel I ever read (and have read aloud to my own children) is a book by Sterling North called So Dear to My Heart.

Granny Kincaid, who is raising her grandson, Jeremiah, quilts throughout the book. Some of her quilts tell the family history. When told that they could win prizes at the county fair, she says she'll never take them there; she makes them because, she says, "they pleasure me."
Of course, the main "thread" of the story is not about Granny's quilts, but it is major in that Granny tells Jeremiah her version of his parents' story as she sews.

Unfortunately, this book is out of print now but could be found, I feel sure, somewhere in used book sales. My copy is tattered and torn from being over-loved through the decades.

The Jennifer Chiaverini Elm Creek Quilters books are nice reads - nicer if read in sequence, but each book could stand alone, too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Here's her website

I have to endorse the Jennifer Chiaverini series. When she began to do research for her novels, she joined an online group I belonged to called Quiltnet. It was a lively group active in the days before widespread web use, based on email aliases. Unfortunately it suffered from its own popularity. It had free hosting on a university system, but as it grew and began to consume more resources, the moderator had to put a lot of limits on it to keep its resource usage under control. In the end, most people went elsewhere.

I remember Jennifer Chiaverini as a lovely person -- eager, friendly, intelligent, frank, and unfailingly courteous. It is amazing how well you can get a sense of someone online. We have never met. Her success delighted me. The stories might appeal to those who enjoy gentle reads with an American rather than English touch, based for the most part in Pennsylvania. Chiaverini was at Penn State when she began working on the first book.

Rosefolly

A quilt figured in one of the Judy Bolton series mysteries by Margaret Sutton. Its title is The Clue in the Patchwork Quilt. I've seen an old photograph of Margaret Sutton herself quilting on a wooden quilting hoop that looks exactly like my own first quilting hoop.

Rosefolly

I have to say, I'm very impressed with the information that's hidden away in the brains of the RP crowd - just waiting for the question to come up. (And I certainly enjoyed Martin's helpful suggestions.) I e-mailed this thread to my boss this afternoon and she was very pleased. We haven't had a chance yet to discuss which ones are new to her, but I know some of these are. Thanks very much for helping. And if any others come to mind, let me know. -- Kathy

Earline Fowler also writes books with quilting titles... they are mystery books with some quilt-related things but basically just easy-to-read books. Any quilter who reads knows about Fowler, Chiaverini, and Michaels... so she may know of those already. They all have a "series" of quilty books (I know since I'm a quilter :-))))))) Have you Googled "quilting novels"????

Thank you, Connie. Oddly, though I'm a tried and true Googler, I had not Googled "quilting novels." I came straight to the source of all good book information - Reader's Paradise. A moment ago I followed your advice and I see there are indeed some sites to explore. Before this little exploration, I didn't even realize there was a subgenre (?) of "quilting novels." I'm going to bet that RP has supplied titles that even these sites don't know about.